The peregrinations of Fernão Mendes Pinto (c. 1509-1583), the Portuguese adventurer who wrote an account of his voyages of exploration titled Peregrinação after his return to the Iberian peninsula in 1569, are recounted in a somewhat disorderly style in João Botelho’s biographical film.
Set against a backdrop of hostility among courtiers who resent the celebrity Pinto was winning in royal circles with his tales of hitherto unknown places, as well as initial condemnation by the Church, Botelho follows the itinerary of the memoir even though the work—which was only published posthumously decades after Pinto’s death—has been criticized by scholars for its exaggerations, and perhaps outright inventions. (One of the Portuguese nicknames for Pinto is a pun on his name that labels him mendacious.)
But Botelhois less concerned with historical accuracy than with painting a vibrant cinematic portrait, in many respects outsized and highly artificial, of what Pinto claimed were his amazingly eventful voyages to Africa, India, China, and Japan and his encounters with a succession of colorful figures, including rulers, charlatans and powerful personages whom he served sometimes as a confidant but often as a slave.
To that end, Botelho employs extracts from the book as narration spoken by Cláudio da Silva, who stars as Pinto, and punctuates the action with shots of him writing pages of text as his wife looks on. He also adds a kind of Greek chorus to the mix, composed of the sailors who make up Pinto’s crew. Their commentary, however, is delivered in the form of numbers taken from the 1982 record album Por Este Rio Acima by Portuguesesinger-songwriter Fausto, which was based on Pinto’s travels.
The theatrical nature of the film is accentuated by the visuals, which often pose the actors in front of small-scaled sets or separately-shot backdrops (suggesting a very limited budget), and by deliberately histrionic performances in which the cast deliver dialogue frequently lifted directly from the memoir in a stilted style.
A Portuguese audience might find the result intriguing as an attempt, however idiosyncratic, to translate an important, if controversial, national literary landmark to the screen, but others are likely to find Pilgrimage confusing and stylistically aggravating, though its succession of exotic locales and hair’s-breadth escapes (beginning with young Fernão’s flight to avoid the fallout from a scandal in a nobleman’s household) provide some compensation. (As an addendum, it may be noted that author Deana Barroqueiro has accused Botelho of plagiarizing certain episodes in the film from her 2012 novel about Pinto, O Corsário dos SeteMares.) Optional.